Its official, my first born is now five.  She is an amazing five year old, but I’m not here to brag.

Instead I want to share a decision that she made.  She informed me that she was  a big kid now, and she wanted to spend some of her birthday money on her very own camera.  And not one of those toy ones either.  She wanted a real camera.  I slightly panicked inside knowing how expensive cameras could be, and admitting to myself that she is only five, and a camera could be a lot of responsibility.

She was adamant though, and it was her money so we went off to Target in search of her very first camera.  What we found was exciting.  Vivitar makes a small point and shoot camera with built in memory for around twenty dollars.  Mind you, this is only 2.1 megapixels so the quality is not amazing.  But it will do for now.  There is no zoom, and no flash, so she is being forced into learning about light and how to manually frame a picture so it looks the way she wants.

Being a photographer myself I can’t deny that I’m slightly tickled that she is following my footsteps if you will.  I also can’t deny that some of her pictures are actually quite good.  She keeps her camera with her throughout the day and snaps photos of things that she thinks are beautiful, or that she wants to remember.  At the end of the day we empty the pictures onto my computer and she tells me all about what she was thinking or doing when taking the pictures.  Maybe I should start writing down what she says so I can make her a scrapbook for when she is older.  In fact I know I will.  Even more exciting is that this little twenty dollar camera is fostering a new love for photography in my daughter.  Plus it is acting as a fantastic conversation starter for us.   She loves that I am so interested in her day and enjoys telling me all about it (even though I’m there for most of it).

When Daddy comes home from work she goes through the whole lot of pictures again sharing her day with him too.  I can guarantee it is something that he is absolutely tickled with.  He sort of feels like he isn’t missing quite so much while he is away.  Hopefully this will be a tradition we keep for years.

-Stephanie Wright